Song as Thematic Motif

Sometimes a song can be the perfect distillation of a story’s key theme.

Songs have been a presence in movies since the advent of sound technology. Indeed the first ‘talkie’ is the 1927 film The Jazz Singer featuring Al Jolson.

Songs can be used strictly for entertainment, but as musicals have shown time and again — Music Man, A Star is Born, Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story — they may be employed to convey and highlight narrative themes.

Then there are non-musicals where a song plays a key part such as “Buffalo Gals” in It’s a Wonderful Life, “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca, and “I’m Easy” in Nashville.

The movie Moneyball (2011) has one of the best uses of song as thematic motif in recent memory. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, here is a summary from a review by Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan:

It’s a surprise because “Moneyball” is that rare sports movie that doesn’t end with a rousing last-second victory or a come-from-behind celebration. Fittingly for a book its author calls “a biography of an idea,” it deals not only with wins and losses but also with the quixotic quest of a man [Billy Beane as played by Brad Pitt] who wanted to revolutionize a sport, someone who was willing, in Lewis’ words, “to rethink baseball: how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why.”

While that is a fair description of what happens in the plot, the Themeline provides an emotional resonance that elevates the story and makes it special: Beane had been a top baseball prospect who made it to the Major Leagues, but washed out as a player. It is that ghost of his past which hangs over his character throughout the film, influencing his every mood and action.

Beane has a teenage daughter Casey who lives full-time with her mother and step-father. When she visits Beane and he picks her up at the airport, they immediately go to a music store to look at guitars for her. He asks her to sing a little something for “dear old dad.”

Here is the verse of the song she sings:

I’m just a little bit caught in the middle
 Life is a maze and love is a riddle
 I don’t know where to go, can’t do it alone I’ve tried
 And I don’t know why

The song works on so many thematic levels: the riddle of baseball (the movie begins with a quote from New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle, “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life”); the maze which is Beane’s life as he tries to find a place in a sport he both loves (childhood passion) and loathes (past failures); how he can’t do it alone (it is his connection with a young Yale economics graduate Peter Brand played by Jonah Hill that sends him on his “quixotic quest” to revolutionize baseball), and so on.

Toward the very end of the movie, when Beane has proved his point and been offered a position with the Boston Red Sox, potentially making him the highest paid general manager in all of professional sports, he is driving his car in Oakland when he puts in a homemade CD recording by Casey. It’s the same song only now with more lyrics including this refrain:

I am just a little girl lost in the moment
I’m so scared but I don’t show it
I can’t figure it out
It’s bringing me down I know
I’ve got to let it go
And just enjoy the show oh oh oh
Just enjoy the show oh oh oh

As a recurring motif, it nails perfectly what lies at the very foundation of Beane’s character — “I’m so scared but I don’t show it” — and the prescription for his life — “Just enjoy the show,” a point which fits the story so well because ball players refer to the Major Leagues as “The Show.”

In the end, Beane chooses to stay in Oakland and the suggestion is the emotional connection he has with this place and his daughter are more important to him than making gobs of money.

Takeaway: I have to acknowledge that in the realpolitik of Hollywood, readers and development executives are predisposed to ding a script which includes a specific song by a recording artist. Why? Because licensing rights to music costs dollars and studios have their own people who handle this type of thing.

So, if you’re writing a scene and it involves, let’s say, a guy mopping a kitchen floor and as you envision it, he is dancing while doing the chore to the strains of “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, that is a ding-worthy use of the song. If the specific song has no thematic bearing on the story, it’s best to do this:

Dancing with his mop ‘partner,’ Mingo does some serious head-banging moves to a classic 70s heavy metal song.

However, if you have a song which amplifies your story’s central theme and can work as a musical motif, my advice: Use it. Don’t let this supposed rule against including songs squash what could potentially be a great way to enhance the entertainment value and storytelling effectiveness of your script.