Rewatchables Reference

• Winner (consensus): Writing 'On the Dark Side' on the roof of Tony Mart's. Bill: 'Which might have been the best 7 minutes of the 80s.' The scene where Frank plays the melody, Eddie tells the sax player to jump in, the drums kick in, and the whole band catches the vibe on the rooftop.
• Bill's full list: Cold open with Dark Side at the college, Ellen Barkin intro at Media Magazine, going to the lounge to see Sal's band (the 15 minutes in the middle), fake Eddie's performance, Wild Summer Nights into Tender Years, and the sax player leaning on the piano.
• Van loves any scene where 'a band is together creating a song and there's an unexpected missing ingredient' — Eddie hears something nobody else can.
• CR: 'Nothing is funnier than when a hit song comes together in a movie in 2 minutes. I fucking love it.'

• Craig: No caller ID — Joanne keeps getting mysterious phone calls and can't figure out who's calling.
• Bill: Watching a row of TVs through a department store window — 'that doesn't exist anymore.'
• Van: The amount of smoking — 'elite smoking movie, and everybody is really smoking. They're sucking them down.'
• Van: Zero effort on aging or de-aging — 'they would take you, mess your hair up a little bit, put you in an open shirt. You're 14 years old.' Joanne and Joey Pants look exactly the same in both eras.
• CR: 'On the Dark Side' sounds like Bryan Adams, Southside Johnny, or John Mellencamp — very classic early-mid 80s rock sound.
• CR: Ellen Barkin working for 'Media Magazine,' a regional entertainment TV news program — a very specific 1980s phenomenon.

• Bill: Wendell Newton — 'a home run in this movie because he has no lines but you feel him in the movie.' Proposes the Wendell Newton Award for best performance with no lines.
• Bill: Jersey Shore as a setting in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s — 'it was really fun to go to.'
• Van: The Springsteen connection — Wendell as Eddie's 'musical Obi-Wan,' mirroring Clarence Clemons in the E Street Band. 'The probably biggest heat ever. Most famous heat ever.'
• Bill: The smoking — it makes sense for rock stars and adds to the cool factor.

• CR: Amazon and Apple's streaming posters for this movie use Sal's lounge band instead of Eddie, Berenger, or Barkin. 'It's fucking crazy. It's Eddie and the Cruisers, and you're like, neither Eddie nor Behringer nor Barkin are on the poster.'
• Bill: Streaming services counting down to the next show during the closing credits — 'Amazon's counting me down in the bottom right corner because it's about to send me to the next thing. And now I really want to hear the ending.' Van: 'This is the fucking shit, bro. Fucking can't stand it.'

• Bill: Kenny the drummer in his nightclub monologue — 'remember when you used to be driving around, things are getting wild in the backseat, you're touching on her...' Craig: 'Where the fuck did that come from? He could have been at the Copacabana.'
• CR: Joey Pants mad at Wordman in the studio — 'this is my one scene, I'm going to get really mad at you guys, and you're going to like it.'
• Van: Eddie whenever they're not on stage — 'just going for it, he puts his whole body into it.' The shove scene especially.

• Bill: If this movie had two more great songs in it, does it become Grease? 'The level to which Grease is better than this movie is difficult to articulate.'
• CR: The movie should have saved Dark Side for later instead of opening with it — 'if you make us wait to hear Dark Side and you get to see them do the big full band version of Dark Side after you've seen them write it, it blows the fucking top off the movie.'
• Van: Wordman tried to kill Eddie and actually killed the saxophone player. Wordman is 'fucking crazy' — openly pursuing Eddie's girl the entire movie. In the sequel, Eddie is still hiding under a pseudonym 'because he's fucking scared of Wordman.'

• Paré claims they were ready to replace him with Rick Springfield and he had to do that first concert where he lip-synced all the songs to prove himself. Rick Springfield admitted he did think about trying to get the part.
• Berry Sand, an original David Letterman producer from the first five years of the show, inexplicably appears in the opening scene. Bill: 'I never understood why he was in this movie. That's like if Daniel Kellison was in the movie just randomly.'

• Joey Pants: not eligible (too prominent in the movie). Bill: 'You can see all the seeds for Ralphie Cifaretto from The Sopranos.'
• John Stockwell (Kenny the drummer) — 'the lead guy from Christine and also in Top Gun. He's the guy that knows he's Wizard from Top Gun.'
• Winner: Matthew Laurance as Sal Amato — also David Silver's dad on '90210' (36 episodes, and did sports talk radio in Lexington, KY). Bill nominates him for the Peter North Award for most effort: 'He's got this nothing bass part, throwing himself into this full speed 100%.'

Bill: Michael Keaton as Kenny the drummer — 'a year after Night Shift, just looking for work, gets this big scene playing a blackjack dealer, going crazy.'

• Berenger said he did not try to learn piano but 'did practice some keyboards in his trailer.' Matthew Laurance actually learned to play the bass.
• Paré remembers that when they all played together, 'it was a little like Stillwater — everybody was going nuts and they were really pretending they were the band.'
• The Palace of Depression was a real place in Vineland, NJ (no longer exists). Tony Mart's was a real place until the early 80s, then demolished. Fraternity scenes shot at Haverford College outside Philadelphia.
• Helen Schneider (Joanne) was a famous German music star in the 70s and 80s.
• CR: In a Washington Post article, Berenger claims they filmed a scene watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and making fun of it. After the quote, director Martin Davidson says: 'We never shot that.' CR: 'People were probably using substances while making this.'
• The Eddie impersonator in Sal's lounge band was played by Joey Balin, who put out a solo album in 1994.

• Michael Paré: Yes, definitely.
• Tom Berenger: No (Platoon nomination, Major League run).
• Ellen Barkin: No (Diner, Sea of Love era).
• Matthew Laurance: Bill says probably David Silver's dad on 90210.
• Beaver Brown Band: Yes.
• Jersey Shore movies: No, 'but I also can't come up with a better one.' CR: 'The summer destination for most of Philadelphia.' Craig: The Jersey Shore TV show is probably the apex for the Jersey Shore.
• Arthur Rimbaud: No, he's had bigger moments.
• Helen Schneider: Her German music career was 'pretty hot.'

Bill: 'I have Scorsese.' CR: 'Scorsese. Tri-state area.' Unanimous.

• Bill: Media Magazine's closing feature shows full-color video with close-ups and editing from a 1963 college concert — 'how were they filming that in 1963? It's like Sunday Night Football.' CR: 'Nine cameras at the 1963 Spring Dance of Benton.'
• CR: The one bit of 'Season in Hell' we hear is 'pretty vanilla — just a slow blues song. This is not that complicated' — not the avant-garde noise the movie describes.
• Van: Is Wordman Mozart? 'He's fucking around, all of a sudden he's playing piano, he's got solos.' (CR clarifies Wordman already knew piano — Eddie was teaching him rock chords.)
• Craig: 'I don't think any of these people would have hung out. This band makes no sense as humans outside of the band.' Bill: 'Sal and Joey Pants would have hung out. And that's it.'
• Bill: Berenger looks exactly the same in both eras — no aging difference at all.
• Bill: Would there have been more interest in Eddie's disappearance? Van: 'They never found a body. People would never fucking let go of it. That's the DB Cooper thing.'

• Bill: Prestige TV — make it an 80s band set in the early 2000s (like The Strokes era) with the revival happening today via TikTok.
• Van: 'Begging to be like a Tupac situation. Some rapper that we thought was killed in a beef, but he's alive.' Begging to be remade with that exact spin.
• CR: Blair Witch it — 'basically try to Blair Witch it where you're like, we've discovered these tapes' as a viral marketing campaign.

• CR does Zane Lowe interviewing Eddie: 'You've just seen your own face on Media Magazine. Season in Hell never even came into fruition, never came to harvest, never came to flowering. Take me to the palace and let's get out of this oppressive zone.'
• CR also does Zane Lowe interviewing Wendell — but Wendell doesn't say anything. 'Wendell, man, you played with Bud, you played with Dexter Gordon. Now you're on junk.'

Bill: Best Original Song — 'On the Dark Side.' That year's winner was 'Flashdance... What a Feeling' by Irene Cara. Other nominees included 'Maniac' (also from Flashdance), 'Over You' from 'Tender Mercies', and two 'Yentl' songs. Bill: 'Feel like we could have stuck Dark Side in there. Maybe bump the second-best Yentl song.'

• Bill: What happened to Media Magazine? Does Maggie move on to Live at 5 in NYC? CR: 'She moves up to People or Newsweek or Time.'
• Van: How did Joanne not get pregnant? 'Music-filled lusty lovemaking, balling in the back of a car.' Bill: Maybe Eddie was so driven by the art that there wasn't a lot of sex — 'that's why she got with Wordman.'
• CR: What did Wordman think was going to happen when he shows up after his long date with Joanne? 'Of course Eddie's going to fuck with you now.'
• Bill: What did Doc sell the Season in Hell tapes for and what happened? Does Season in Hell do well? Bill and CR: No, it's a bust and 'Doc probably is arrested for fraud in some way.'

Bill: The photo of Joanne with the two guys that's in her place — 'just have it on the wall right now, people are like, what the fuck is that? Hey, the Cruisers day three.'

• Sal: 'Guys like you, guys like me and you, they strike oil under your garden and all you get is dead tomatoes.' Bill: 'Salamato, philosopher.'
• Eddie: 'If we can't be great, then there's no sense in ever playing music again.'

• Bill: 'That Thing You Do'.
• CR also floats 'Legend of Billie Jean' — 'same kind of regional local sensation. Huge story in my town but wouldn't have made it out to LA.'

• Bill: The Beaver Brown Band — 'still dining on this 40 years later.' CR agrees: 'Those songs still get played. Those guys still probably make money off this.'
• Van: HBO — 'Good call.'

• Craig had a great time. 'Loved it, super likable.' Music provides a high floor: 'You're just going to win 48 games with a couple good songs in it.'
• Craig draws a Pet Sounds parallel — Brian Wilson and Eddie Wilson, the controversial second album that nobody liked at first but is later considered a masterpiece.
• Craig's provocative question: Is this the 80s equivalent of current Netflix movie slop like 'Gaslit by My Husband'? 'Nobody honors those films. But these movies we look back on and we're like, oh, Eddie and the Cruisers, such a fun easy watch.' Van counters: the difference is HBO just put it on and you found it, whereas now you have to actively search for movies.