3 Songs So Great That They Inspired Movies

It’s no secret that films can inspire great music. After all, the Academy Awards honor the Best Original Song featured in a film each year. But the reverse is also true, as great songs can inspire movies as well.

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That was the case in the three below instances, which have The Beatles, Kenny Rogers, and Bruce Springsteen to thank for their creation.

“Across the Universe” by The Beatles

“Across The Universe,” which The Beatles released in 1969, inspired a 2007 movie of the same name. Directed by Julie Taymor, the jukebox musical paid tribute to the iconic band in many ways.

Much like The Beatles, the film begins in the 1960s as it follows a young Brit who comes to the U.S. and meets a girl and her eccentric friends. The movie employs 33 Beatles songs throughout its run time, 31 that are sung, and two that are used in the score.

Additionally, the main characters in the film were named after Beatles songs. For instance, Jude, played by Jim Sturgess, and Lucy, played by Evan Rachel Wood, were inspired by “Hey Jude” and “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” respectively.

“It is a gamble,” Taymor told The New York Times of interpreting The Beatles’ music. “Everybody has their own interpretation.”

Taymor told the outlet that Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison all saw the film, though she was only present for McCartney’s screening.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Taymor recalled McCartney’s reaction to the movie.

“It was the most terrifying moment. I just felt that ultimately, that was it. I got to do the movie and sit with him and have him see it,” she said. “And he sat next to me and when ‘All My Loving’ started, he sang under his breath. That was it!”

“At the end I did the classic thing. I said, ‘Was there anything you didn’t like?’” Taymor continued. “He said, ‘What’s not to like?’ And it was just those words.”

“The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers’ signature song, “The Gambler“, spawned a 1980 movie aptly titled Kenny Rogers as The Gambler.

Rogers, in his acting debut, stars in the movie as Brady Hawkes, a gambler on a mission to connect with the son he doesn’t know. The Emmy-nominated movie, which is described as “an an Old West tale”, was a critical and commercial success. In fact, four sequels were eventually released.

In a 2015 interview with NPR, Rogers reflected on why the GRAMMY-winning song became such a hit.

 “I do two kinds of songs,” he said. “If you go back and look at all of my songs, they fall into one of two categories: There’s story songs that have social significance, or they’re ballads that say what every man would like to say and every woman would like to hear. And ‘The Gambler’ was a story song.”

“The great thing about country music is good story songs: They tell you where you are to start with, like a bar in Toledo or on a train bound for nowhere, and then they carry you on this emotional journey and then they leave you somewhere saying, ‘Oh, I get it,’” Rogers continued. “I think I am, if nothing else, a good storyteller. I’ve never felt I was a particularly good singer, but I am a good storyteller.”

“Highway Patrolman” by Bruce Springsteen

The Indian Runner, Sean Penn’s 1991 directorial debut, was based off of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 song, “Highway Patrolman”. The movie follows two brothers (played by Viggo Mortensen and David Morse), who are on opposite sides of the law.

During a 20th anniversary screening of the film, Penn recalled that, after drinking “15 to 17 Heinekens,” he called Springsteen up in the middle of the night to ask his permission to adapt the song into a film. Springsteen obliged, and nearly a decade later the film came to fruition.

“I heard ‘Highway Patrolman’ about eight years ago, and I got intrigued,” Penn once told Interview Magazine. ” It touches on lots of things that interest me but purposely leaves them unresolved. I say purposely, but what I really mean is, we don’t know the answers.”

The script came easily for Penn, who penned it in “about a month”.

“I had a very specific idea of what I wanted this movie to look like, but I didn’t know how I was going to get it made, financially, and I didn’t know whether I could get the rights to the story,” he continued. “But that all came together pretty easily.”

In the film’s opening credits the words “Inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song, ‘Highway Patrolman’, appear onscreen. In his biography, Sean Penn: His Life and Times, Penn revealed that the credit was Springsteen’s way of providing his endorsement to the project, since the singer’s contract allowed him the right to not have his name associated with the film.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns